Anthropology Now

ISSN: 1942-8200 (Print) 1949-2901 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uann20

Graphic Thought

Valentina Ramia

To cite this article: Valentina Ramia (2017) Graphic Thought, Anthropology Now, 9:3, 147-158,
DOI: 10.1080/19428200.2017.1390888

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2017.1390888

Published online: 04 Jan 2017.

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books and arts
Graphic Thought
Valentina Ramia
Nick Sousanis. 2015. Unflattening. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press. 208 pages.
As the following excerpts demonstrate, Un-
flattening is a skillfully drawn and carefully
written graphic novel that doubles as Nick
Sousanis’ doctoral dissertation on percep-
tion, pedagogy and comics for Teachers
College at Columbia University. The book
unfolds an academic argument in the form
itself, displaying graphic sequences and text
boxes to assert that comics are the antidote to
thinking and seeing flatly.
At once intellectually demanding and
aesthetically satisfying, Unflattening makes
for active, relational and imaginative read-
ing. Sousanis’ drawings make you want to
caress the pages as you flip through them,
an effect that only a beautifully illustrated
graphic novel can create. Its written language
is modest but decisive and often feels poetic
because of the pauses caused by the distribu-
tion of the text on the page; a balm for sore
academic eyes.
Sousanis’ paneling is so versatile it can
present Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory
in a single page, emulate Fritz Lang’s story-
board for Metropolis, and allow for super-
hero-themed comics passages, such as the
one in which the boxily built Lockerman ex-
plains the role of imagination in thinking vi-
Valentina Ramia Graphic Thought  147
Anthropology Now, 9:147–158, 2017  •  Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1942-8200 print / 1949-2901 online  • https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2017.1390888
sually. The drawing style, too, is impressively
eclectic. It can easily remind a graphic novel
connoisseur of Charles Burns’ heavy usage
of black ink that gave an eerie expression to
the mutant characters of Black Hole; but it
can also appeal to those who better connect
with realistic illustrated depictions, such as
Sousanis’ outstanding drawings of nothing
less than the Mona Lisa. At the same time,
Sousanis’ artistic dexterity is unpretentious,
a feature greatly appreciated in encounters
with high theory.
But visual metaphors are far more than
didactic to Sousanis. “While image is, text
is always about,” he claims, and comics, in
his view, is the medium that enables us to
think of “what can be made visible when we
work in a form that is not only about, but is
also the thing itself.” As such, Unflattening
comes to life immediately, the first chapter
being, in fact, the most effective example
of Sousanis’ confidence in the form’s ability
to create alternate epistemologies. In an ex-
traordinary sequence of 18 pages, Sousanis
presents the notion of “flatness,” the one-di-
mensional, unquestioned way of inhabiting
the world that anthropologists usually refer to
as “common sense.” As he acknowledges in
the notes to the chapter, Sousanis draws from
references that range from characters in Star
Trek to Diego Rivera’s murals and Alberto Gi-
acometti’s sculptures, and he makes graphic
representations of the thought of writers and
philosophers, such as Herbert Marcuse and
Italo Calvino. Sequences zoom in and out
to express the movement of ideas; changes
in visual perspective allude to changes of
perspective in thought; and the interplay be-
tween words and images takes you in and
out of conceptual propositions.
 One of the opening sequences of the book, which is also a
12
visual reference to Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society.

148  anthropology Volume 9  •  Number 3  •  December 2017

 13

The graphic representation of “flatness,” inspired by the production design of the film Metropolis.

Valentina Ramia Graphic Thought  149

 This creature, who
once aaempted to
define the universe
through its own
proportions,

and saw
within itself

a microcosm
of the grander
spheres,

Now finds
itself
confined,

boxed into
buules of
its own
making...

row upon row...

upon row.

Thought and behavior...

aligned in a single dimension.

The rhythm and distribution of panels in Unflattening are uniquely

14
combined with Sousanis’ eclectic drawing style.

150  anthropology Volume 9  •  Number 3  •  December 2017

 15

Valentina Ramia Graphic Thought  151

 We’re concerned with the
ways in which we employ
visual and verbal modes in order to distii
something tangible
from the vastnee
of sense experience.

the verbal marches

along linearly,

presents itself
ai-at-once
step
by
step,

simultaneous
a discrete
sequence
of words

The visual, on
the other hand...

ai over
“strung one
after another,”
“like beads on
a rosary.”

as Susaae
Langer writes, relational

A picture is worth a thousand words?

Perhaps. But because of their distinct

structures, there is no direct
cooespondence betwrn them. intercoaected

verrl marccs
alo line
ng a
Tc

rly step
No start or
end points...
by

hierarchical step

sequence sttng
tog
et
dis

cr
of e

lik
a

words e
cr
et

beads
on
trr-like
rosary
a rhizomatic

A description of an image never actuaiy represents the image. Rather,

as Michael Baxandai observes, it is a representation of thinking
While image is,
about having srn a picture - it’s already formulated in its own terms.
text is always
about.

58 Comics, in Sousanis’ view, are the antidote to thinking and seeing flatly.

152  anthropology Volume 9  •  Number 3  •  December 2017

 In relying on text as the
primary means of formulating
understanding, what stands
outside its linear structure
is dismieed,

Labeled iiational - no more

conceivable than the notion
of “upwards” to a flatlander.

The visual provides

expreeion where
words fail.

what have we
bbn mieing?

and what can be made visible when

we work in a form that is not only
about, but is also the thing itself.

59

Valentina Ramia Graphic Thought  153

 armed with multiple ways
of ssing, we gain aaee
to multidimensional sight

- a sphere in flatland -

where existing baaiers tumble

and creative poeibilities flourish.

But there are

further dimensions
stii to explore...

82

154  anthropology Volume 9  •  Number 3  •  December 2017

 With this deftness of form, Sousanis pres-
ents his argument in the central chapters. But
it is also here where a reader’s patience might
be put to the test, mainly because complex
theories are summarized at the cost of over-
simplifying them. For example, Sousanis ad-
mitted in an interview to having read only
20 pages of Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thou-
sand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophre-
nia before incorporating their concept of the
“rhizomatic structure” into his argument. To
be fair, this practice might be more frequent
than admitted, especially with complex theo-
ries such as Deleuze and Guattari’s; but the
stakes are higher when the concept is a cen-
tral part of the discussion.
The last chapter of the book, entitled
“Awaking,” is winsomely intimate. It opens
with a drawing of a baby’s silhouette with
text that reads, “We don’t know who you are
until you arrive/We don’t know who you’ll
become until you’ve explored the possibili-
ties.” With these words, Sousanis is at once
sending a message to his unborn daughter
— to whom the book is dedicated — and
encouraging his readers to embark on the
journey he proposes. A few pages later, we
encounter the illustration that became the
cover of the book: a river of feet modeled
after hundreds of pictures that he asked to
be sent to his email address (the invitation
to participate is reproduced word by word in
the book’s notes). In this way, the end of the
book seamlessly incorporates other voices,
giving the sense that a collective journey has
already started.
The attention to how language and art can
become catalysts for a new way of relating
to the world is a product of Sousanis’ unique
passion for two distant currents of thought
Valentina Ramia Graphic Thought  155
that do not frequently converge. On the one
hand, Sousanis’ training at Teachers College
exposed him to the thought of philosophers
of education that range from Paulo Freire to
Maxine Greene (the former a forerunner in
the use of comics for pedagogical and politi-
cal emancipation, the latter a prominent phi-
losopher of the aesthetics of education, who
was one of Sousanis’ mentors at Columbia).
On the other hand, Sousanis’ work is influ-
enced by the thought of comic theorists such
as Scott McCloud, whose work is seminal
to scholars concerned with the relationship
between comics, visual communication and
cognition. Add to this pairing a philosophi-
cal curiosity and an extraordinary grasp of
pace and space, and the result is an author
who writes and draws in a style without
precedent.
Sousanis’ work is thus much more than
a creative way of crafting a dissertation. He
is not using an artistic medium to present
academic research. Rather, he is inviting us
to trouble our notions of writing, reading,
drawing, thinking and understanding and
insists that we juxtapose them, make them
multidimensional. He requires an imagina-
tive leap from us, so as to leave behind the
two-dimensional plane of the book we are
holding and travel with him to the world
of comics, a form that can “hold the unflat
ways in which thought unfolds … A vehicle
well-suited for explorations to come.” Once
this journey is undertaken, he promises,
the reader will feel born again. Even if the
promise is not entirely fulfilled, Unflattening
will certainly leave readers feeling some-
thing new, a freshness in their relationship
to words and images.
 Let’s trace a string
of developments, Distinct awareness
joined in ongoing
(Other means of
conversation
seeing emerged
independently.)

Twin strands multiplies possible

of instruction, responses.
long chains for
construction,

and single coiled

messengers,

A centralized relay
network of cords,

interwoven, inherited from

earlier organisms

permeate our whose ability to

every fiber. respond to light
gave rise to the
mechanics of our
vision.

The pump
Filaments form forms early,
architecture

and provide
locomotion.
its canals transporting
sustenance to the whole.

Outside organisms
reside in our insides

The oppositon of
the thumb let us
grasp the world,
and help incorporate
external materials.
Instead of
splitting in two,

reproduction
takes two,

and forge
a dance of tools,
differences

which in turn, shaped

who we would become.

to bring forth the

unanticipated.
Born
immature,
after Vesalius

our tethers A crinkly outer Getting up on

our two feet from which our
linger. layer enables
selves unfold.
reflection

and anticipation -
reoriented
our heads, and set our ongoing
we can wonder journey in motion...
“what’s next?”

132

156  anthropology Volume 9  •  Number 3  •  December 2017

 our experiences
and interactions,

this social fabric in

which we are woven,

all shape our identity.

The one-dimensional, unquestioned way of inhabiting the world, that anthropologists usually refer to as “common sense”.

Valentina Ramia Graphic Thought  157

Valentina Ramia is a doctoral student in anthro-
pology at Stanford University. She received an
MA in anthropology as a Prize Fellow and an MS
in public policy from The New School. Her re-
search is concerned with the politics of emotions
in asylum proceedings, particularly with how fear
is evaluated in immigration courts. She is also a
classically trained pianist.

158  anthropology Volume 9  •  Number 3  •  December 2017